Allhomes Increases House Price Information Asymmetry

Since allhomes was created early last decade in its research section was a bar graph for each suburb that listed the annual mean (i.e. average) price of houses and units from the 90′s to the current year.

Recently I went back to that page to see what the change in mean prices was in my suburb between 2011 and 2012 but this graph was missing and I couldn’t find it anywhere else on the website.

As background real estate agents have their own portal into allhomes where I’m sure this graph is still available.

There is evidence from a number of sources that ACT real estate prices have dropped from 2011 to 2012 so could allhomes have removed this graph from their public view so as not to spook the ACT market even more than it is?

ED Allhomes had this to say in reply:

Market trends for residential property in the ACT can be found by clicking ACT Property Report under the Research tab. Here you’ll find mean house and unit prices (separated by district), as well as sales volumes per year based on total values and number of sales.

Past sales information for individual suburbs can be found by clicking Property and Past Sales Information under the Research tab; however there are currently no graph representations of this data.

To address the issue of an ailing ACT market, our data reflects that from January 2012 to January 2013, median house prices in the ACT have risen 1.26% from $470,000 to $475,903, whilst median rental prices have decreased 4.35% from $460 to $440.

Allhomes actually provide a fair bit of data (although they way they provide access to it is a bit limited), and I think they should be applauded for doing so. They’re hardly hiding information from the public “so as not to spook the ACT public”.